1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to biometrics, and more particularly to biometric verification systems for confirming the identity of a user.
2. Description of Background Art
Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and statistically analyzing biological data. A biometric is a measurable, physical characteristic or personal behavioral trait used to recognize the identity, or verify the claimed identity, of an enrollee. In general, Biometrics statistically measure certain human anatomical and physiological traits that are unique to an individual. Examples of biometrics include fingerprints, retinal scans, speaker recognition, signature recognition, hand recognition and others.
Verification (also known as authentication) is a process of verifying the user is who they claim to be. A goal of biometric verification is to determine if the user is the authentic enrolled user or an impostor. Generally, biometric verification includes four parts: 1) capture human input, 2) filter out unwanted input such as noise, 3) generate a statistical representation of the biometric input (referred to as a template), and 4) perform a match against biometric information previously gathered and stored during an enrollment procedure.
A multimodal biometric system uses multiple applications to capture different types of biometrics. This allows the integration of two or more types of biometric recognition and verification systems in order to meet stringent performance requirements. A process called fusion may be used to integrate biometrics in a multimodal biometric system. An example of a multimodal system may include a combination of fingerprint verification, face recognition, and voice verification. Multimodal biometric systems may be used to take advantage of the proficiency of each individual biometric and help overcome some of the limitations of a single biometric.